1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a document-revising apparatus for use with a document reading and translating system and, more particularly, to a revised document display apparatus for use with a Japanese-document reading and translating system which is used with a combined system comprising a Japanese document reader adapted for entering a Japanese document as an image and character recognition thereof and an automatic translator, permitting even foreigners who understand little Japanese to revise misread characters with ease.
2. Description of the Related Art
With recent internationalization, it has become increasingly necessary for Japanese documents to be read in various countries. Thus, a combined system comprising a Japanese document reader which serves as Japanese entry means and an automatic translator which translates Japanese into a foreign language has been developed.
FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a conventional Japanese document reader. This prior art consists of an image entry unit 1, an-image-of-a-document storage unit (image memory) 2, a character segmentation unit 3, a character recognition unit 4, a Japanese document storage unit 5, a revising or correcting unit 6 and a display unit 7.
A Japanese document is read as an image-of-a-document by an OCR (optical character reader) of the image entry unit 1 and the-image-of-the-document is then stored in the-image-of-the-document storage unit 2.
Next, the character segmentation unit 3 reads the image of the document from the-image-of-the-document storage unit 2 and segregates characters from the image of the document in sequence. The character recognition unit 4 performs a character recognition process on each of the character segmentations. Data on each of recognized characters is stored in the Japanese document storage unit 5. The display unit 7 displays the Japanese document subjected to the recognition process which has been stored in the Japanese document storage unit 5.
The character recognition rate of the character recognition unit 4 cannot be 100%. Therefore, it is necessary to revise a document that has been partly misrecognized. The user compares the character-recognized document displayed by the display unit 7, with the original document (namely, the document written or printed on a sheet of paper) to search for misrecognized characters. If he finds any, he revises them by using the revising unit 6. For example, the revising work may be performed by deleting a misrecognized character, entering the Japanese rendering or reading (kana: Japanese syllabry) of an image character corresponding to the misrecognized character, performing kana-to-kanji (Chinese character) conversion on the kana to obtain a correct character, and again storing the obtained character data in the Japanese document storage unit 5.
FIG. 2 is a block diagram of a conventional automatic translator comprising a data entry unit 8, a translating unit 9, a translated document storage unit 10 and a display unit 7'.
Japanese-document data entered via the data entry unit 8 is read into the translating unit 9 for translation into a language (for example, English) other than Japanese. The translated document is stored in the translated document storage unit 10 and displayed on the display unit 7' as needed.
The Japanese-document reader of FIG. 1 and the automatic translator of FIG. 2 constitute separate systems. Since such separate systems have poor operability, it has been proposed to integrate them. FIG. 3 is a block diagram of a conventional integrated Japanese-document reading and translating system. In FIG. 3, like reference characters are used to designate blocks corresponding to those in FIGS. 1 and 2.
In the system of FIG. 3, first, a Japanese document is stored in the Japanese document storage unit 5 via the image entry unit 1, the-image-of-the-document storage unit 2, the character segmentation unit 3 and the character recognition unit 4, and is revised by the revision unit 6 while it is being displayed on the display unit 7.
Next, the correct Japanese document stored in the Japanese document storage unit 5 is entered directly into the translating unit 9 for translation into a foreign language, as in the translating unit 9 of FIG. 2. The obtained foreign language document is then stored in the translated document storage unit 10 and displayed by the display unit 7 as needed. That is, the display unit 7 also serves as the display unit 7' of FIG. 2.
In this way the Japanese-document reading and translating system of FIG. 3 can perform a combined process of reading a Japanese document written or printed on a sheet of paper and translating it to a foreign language.
However, the conventional system of FIG. 3 has the following problems.
First, the user has to compare a displayed document with an original Japanese document prior to image entry (a document written or printed on a sheet of paper) with his eyes in order to search for and revise misrecognized characters. Thus, it is very difficult for a foreigner ( a non-Japanese) whose knowledge of Japanese is poor to be sure of correctly revising the results of recognition.
Second, since it is difficult to be sure that the recognition results have been correctly revised, subsequent translation work may not be executed correctly.
As described above, heretofore, a system combining a Japanese-document reader and an automatic translator which is easy for foreigners to operate has not yet been constructed.